Process/Product

A bit of radio silence here. Happy Spring!

I finally finished Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. Actually, I thought I had finished it a long time ago; it being started it right after her appearance at Seattle Arts and Lectures. The bookmark was peeking out of it as it was being put back onto the shelf and it revealed there were a few chapters left. Sometimes you read things right at the right time. She talked about following your curiosity in times of creative drought. In this season of child rearing, theater, my chosen creative profession, seems far out of my reach. Inspiration calling on others who are able to answer it. Handcrafts, knitting and sewing specifically, have sparked my interest but it it hasn’t fulfilled me in the way that I expected. And maybe that’s because I’ve been too caught up in product. Somewhere along the line completing a project has become the only measurement of success. The number of creative things completed equates to my ability/productivity/talent. To a certain extent that’s true. I’m both a beginner sewer and knitter and the time to work on projects is so fragmented that most of it is used re-learning what I was doing in the first place. The sweater is being knit one slow row after one slow row. Instead reveling in the fact that I finally learned how to pick up a dropped stitch, the focus is on the fact that it’s been 7 months since it was cast on. It’s hard when your mind works much faster than your hands; when your days are filled with countless worthy (and not so worthy) tasks. I’ve been toppled by a wave where product means everything and process nothing. This is the place where the craft ceases to be easy or rewarding; where it’s harder to push forward and easier to veer away from it- sometimes to pick it up again, sometimes not.

My son was gifted a book called Stardines, Swim Across the Sky and other poems by Jack Prelutsky. We love it for it’s word play. One poem stood out:

  PLANDAS sit around all day,planning what to do. Their plans amount to nothing for they never see them through. They plan to run a marathon or take a railroad trip. They plan to cross the ocean on a wooden sailing ship. They plan to learn to roller-skate, to juggle, and to fence.  They plan to go to clown school and cavort in circus tents. They plan to play the saxophone and form their own brass bands…But PLANDAS never do these things- they just keep making plans.

Plandas are my spirit animal, in a way. Planning lands squarely in my comfort zone: imagination, creativity, grand ideas, courage with basically no risk (aside from a closet full of supplies). And while one might see failure in a plan never being put into place, in this case, failure doesn’t even have a chance. If you never begin the plan it still has worlds of potential. (The trigger can be pulled at at a moments notice.) And thus, you never get to the place where you’re stuck in process without product because you’ve never started in the first place.

Ah, but just being a planda isn’t really living. And just quitting when things get tough, when the real work begins, you never grow, learn, discover or improve. To finish the sweater, attempt colorwork, to take another sewing class to complete the dress; to continue to follow this curiosity of handcrafts is where life happens. Yes, it’s easier to plan or start and complete projects that have definite deadlines but much harder to sit in a sea of process.

Whether I guide the handcraft projects into the harbor of completion shouldn’t be the only measurement of success. Reading Big Magic served a reminder and encouragement that curiosity is valuable, just in itself. A meditation on the journey. A prompt to think how success is defined. A result, a finished object, is not required every single time a project begins. It’s a balance between planning (dream) process (journey) and result (destination). We can’t be in one spot for too long. A few dreams, a couple of journeys and a handful of destinations, all cycling at different intervals. It’s tempting to cut one or the other short, to camp out in one place for too long or forget to be present in whatever stage we’re in at the moment.

So I guess I’ve been in the process part of my current handcrafts for a little too long and tangled up in what constitutes success. Maybe I’ll start a new project, pick up an old one again (I did just start a sewing lab class) or follow my handcraft curiosity to somewhere deeper. I doubt I’ll ever become an expert knitter, sewer or even theater director. And to be honest, that would be putting a a predetermined measurement of success on my curiosity. But if I don’t allow myself to continue to work, learn and create, no matter what pace or outcome, how will I ever know? There may be a day that I can say: I’ve been knitting, sewing and directing plays for 30 years now!